Until she knocks at the door, Maria hasn’t even considered what Anna’s mother might look like. In the flesh she is small and brittle, older looking than her years. For a moment, Maria thinks of her own mother, and tears unexpectedly prickle in the grooves of her eyes.
‘Maria, where have you been?’ Stella says, moving into the hallway behind her grandmother, addressing Maria as though she might have just popped out to the shops for a pint of milk. Maria crouches down and waits for both girls to run over and throw their arms around her neck, their unquestioning acceptance of their new situation almost breaking her heart. They insist on showing her their new shoes as they dress to follow her into the taxi, Diane joining last.
‘Where are we going?’ Stella asks.
‘We’re going back to London for a few days. And then you’ll come back to Granny’s house for a while, until you’re allowed to come and live with me.’
Diane nods in tacit agreement.
‘Mummy and Daddy won’t be there,’ Rose says and Maria looks up. It is the first full sentence she has ever heard Rose say.
There is a pull at her chest. ‘No. But I will be there and then you’ll come back to Granny’s for a little while and then I’ll never go anywhere without you again. OK?’
The flat they have rented for a few days is not far from the chapel on Rosslyn Hill where David’s funeral was held.
‘Will she be able to hear us when we say goodbye?’ Rose asks the morning of their mother’s funeral, as Maria ties a ribbon around one of her pigtails.
Maria pauses. ‘I don’t know, darling.’ Rose looks away, her lip wobbling, and Maria leans forward. ‘Hey, you know what? She will hear you. Absolutely. She will always hear you and she will always love you. You will never be alone. You understand?’
Rose nods and Maria leans in to kiss her head. ‘I’m so sorry you have to do this.’
Maria takes the girls’ hands in hers as the music plays, Diane walking behind them in a navy-blue hat. The church is bathed in light. Settling on the bench in the front row, Maria’s eyes scan the room. Other than a few familiar faces, which she recognises as mothers from the school, and a throng of women who might have been Anna’s former colleagues at the magazine, there are not many guests.
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Maria turns. The woman with long red curls smiles.
‘You must be Maria. I’m Meg …’
Without faltering Meg smiles brightly at each girl in turn. ‘And you must be Stella and Rose.’
The girls nod and Meg holds their eyes, sniffing away the tears as they form. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.’
The organ starts up and Meg says, ‘Maria, I’d love to stay in touch, if that’s OK?’
‘Of course.’ She reaches out a hand. She is about to turn to the front when the doors at the back of the church open and a woman in a double-breasted coat marches along the central aisle, flanked by policemen. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, holding up a piece of paper at the priest. ‘We have reason to prevent the funeral taking place today.’
Maria bristles with nervous energy as she and the girls settle on a bench at the top of the hill, overlooking the pond, the leaves of the weeping willow skirting the water. She has managed to distract them from the police intrusion at the funeral the previous day, but she wonders how much will remain there, lodged in their subconscious memory.
Leaning in to kiss each of the girls on the head in turn, she sits back and watches Stella jump off the bench, taking Rose’s hand and leading her to the edge of the water, tossing in a stick and marvelling as she watches it glide towards a band of coots.
Smiling to herself, Maria looks up and nods in acknowledgement at the woman from the adoption services who is supervising the visit from a respectful distance. Though she can’t say officially yet, the woman has mooted the likelihood that the adoption order will be granted. There are no other claimants.
‘Hey.’
When Maria looks up, she sees Harry walking towards her. He is fidgety, looking over his shoulder.
‘Hey.’ She smiles at him. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m good,’ he says, settling next to her on the bench, a copy of the morning paper under his arm.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ Maria asks, noting the small suitcase by his feet.
‘For a bit. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral yesterday … I heard it was broken up – what was that about?’ His left eye flickers as he pulls out a cigarette, looking up sharply as the girls run back towards them, each trailing a stick. Stella looks up and smiles.
‘Come here, there’s someone I want you to meet,’ Maria beckons to the twins.
When she turns to Harry, she sees recognition in his expression and she nods. Stella is the spit of him.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘We don’t need you. And I won’t tell them. One day, maybe, but we’ll see.’
Her phone pings and she reaches into her pocket, pulling out the handset, reading the message:
Ready. Madeleine. ‘Right, it’s time for us to go,’ she says, standing and calling to the girls. She won’t risk them, or the adoption official, seeing what happens next. As they walk away, leaving Harry in stunned silence, they pass one of the surrounding police officers who are situated at various points in the park, preparing to swoop.
She can’t believe he came, really, but she’s learnt to expect the unexpected. Besides, he had no reason to believe he was in immediate danger. Nothing had been explicitly stated as to why the funeral had been postponed. Harry might have thought that if he was under suspicion, the police could have come for him at home, straight away. And he might have assumed that there was no reason for anyone to suspect him. Men like Harry simply got away with things, didn’t they? Until they didn’t.
Maria
Now
‘Are you sure you don’t mind watching the girls?’ Maria asks, and Meg smiles back at her.
‘I told you, it’s a pleasure.’
‘Thank you so much – I won’t be long. And if you need anything, you have my mobile—’
‘It’s fine, honestly! We’re going to head to the playground and then maybe go for a hot chocolate. It will be fun.’
The solicitor’s office is above a shop on Euston Road. Maria follows the map on her phone until she finds herself outside the address she is looking for. Once she is buzzed upstairs, she approaches the desk. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ the receptionist smiles.
‘Yes,’ Maria nods. ‘I do.’
‘Anna’s will specified that this envelope must be given only to you,’ the solicitor says over cheap spectacles hanging from a string around her neck.
Maria feels her cheeks grow hot. ‘What is it?’
‘Here you go,’ the lawyer says, the letter in her hand.
Maria stands, her whole body bristling with nervous excitement as she moves back down the stairs, her fingers clasping the letter, shivering as she is met by a bitter blast of cold air.
Maria sits on the steps of an old bank, a few buildings down, the sound of traffic and bustling commuters fading away as she opens the envelope, Anna’s cursive script staring back at her.
Dear Maria,
If you are reading this then I am gone and I was right to worry.
I want you to know that I knew about you and David. I saw you together, one night in the kitchen. I suppose even before then I understood there was something between you. I forgive you, and I also need you to understand that I am not who you think I am, and David is not who you think he is.
There is too much to explain, some of which will come to light, but one thing I know is that however much you might love him, you love the girls more – you are the only person on earth who cares as much about Stella and Rose as I do. There is no one else I can trust to help them now, and to help me. You have been a better mother to my daughters than I could ever be, and I am grateful to you for being the person I didn’t have the strength to become.
Below are the deta
ils of an offshore bank account with money I have been putting aside for the girls. In total, £500,000, which they will inherit when they are 18. There is also enough for you to look after them until then, and some for yourself for your trouble.
Please look after them. I don’t doubt that David loves you, but the girls love and need you more than David ever could.
Be well.
Anna
The words grow blurred through her tears as she reads them again, before standing and moving towards the crossing. As she reaches King’s Cross station, she sees David, his face staring back at her from the front page of the Evening Standard.
Fake Death Inmate Found Hanged in Cell.
Maria
Months earlier
They had spent the morning in their usual spot, seated at the back of one of the chain coffee shops on Caledonian Road. It was a stone’s throw from the football pitches where David played on Saturday mornings, and a short walk from the library where Maria had spent the past two hours staring at a blank page, no longer interested in the pile of books in her backpack, passing the time before David’s weekly football was over and they would take their usual place opposite one another under the strip-lighting illuminating the Formica countertop.
It was the sort of place David could count on not being discovered by anyone he knew, and his hand rested on hers, his thumb moving back and forth against her knuckle.
He had been distant all morning. Driving from the house he remained silent, without so much as attempting to stroke her knee. By the time he finally joined her at the coffee shop, she was terrified of what might be on his mind. But then, with only the slightest prompting, the floodgates opened. If ever she needed proof that she was his confidante, this was it. As soon as he had started to speak, he could not stop.
‘I didn’t believe my father at first, when he told me. We had gone for dinner, the three of us, to celebrate Anna’s promotion. It was the loveliest night, and then she went home early and my dad and I went on for a drink at his club. We’d just found out Anna was pregnant and I knew she didn’t want me to say anything, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was so bloody excited.
‘As soon as we were in the cab on the way there, I felt him change. I assumed, at first, he was distracted by work or something else. We got to the club, we ordered drinks and as soon as they arrived, I told him. I blurted it out. Anna was pregnant. We were having a baby. I didn’t know then, that there were two of them. But it turns out that was the least of the things I didn’t know.’
David let out a laugh and shifted slightly in his seat, silent for a moment before continuing. ‘When I told him, he didn’t say anything at first. It was as if he hadn’t heard me; he just answered that he had something important to tell me. I remember his words exactly. He said, “David, I’m not sure how else to say this, but your friend, Anna, she’s not who you think she is.”’
The movements of David’s thumb stopped and he looked up at Maria, his eyes almost glazed.
‘It was the night of my father’s party in Greece that they had found out. The one where I finally saw you again. The funny thing was, he already knew there was a mole. He’d got wind of it from one of his contacts, but he thought it was Jeff. Jeff was always a loose cannon, and my father assumed he was the one selling him out. So he had Jorgos follow him, and Jorgos caught her coming out of the study. After that, my father checked the camera, and it was all there. My girlfriend, the love of my life, snooping around in his office.’
David shook his head, laughing to himself, before biting his lip.
‘And you know, I still didn’t believe him. Despite everything. I convinced myself it was an honest mistake, that she had just been looking for a pen or …’ He shook his head. ‘I know, fucking ridiculous. But what … I was supposed to believe that she was a spy? I was supposed to believe the woman I was in love with, the woman carrying my baby, was using me to …’
His voice trailed off, and then started again.
‘For a while I blamed Jeff. I thought he and Jorgos must have been in on it together … setting Anna up in order to cover their own tracks.’
Maria’s throat was constricting. For want of something to distract her hands, she reached for her cup and took a sip, the coffee unexpectedly hot, scalding her lip.
‘But my dad, he wouldn’t give up; he wouldn’t stop going on and on about how she was a fraud. He had seen her passport. She wasn’t born in Wiltshire at the airbase at Boscombe Down, like she told us; she was born in Surrey, and that was where she grew up. An unremarkable life in an unremarkable family, as she stayed until she met me … Her mother wasn’t even dead.’
His fingers were pressed against the side of the table, his knuckles white, his voice wavering with disbelief rather than anger.
‘But even then, I kept thinking there’s got to be an explanation. For months, I believed there had to be an explanation. But my dad wouldn’t drop it, so eventually, I set a trap. A few weeks before she was due to give birth, I went out and left my father’s laptop on the table next to my bed. And I actually felt bad. Even doing that, doubting her just for a second. Then I came home, and it was the day she went into labour – in our room. I came back and her waters had broken, and next to her was the computer, under the duvet on the floor, and it was on. And when I looked at her, her face … That was it. I knew.’
Unaffected by Maria’s silence, David had hardly paused for breath, something inside him having opened that could not easily be closed again before purging years’ worth of stale, festering emotions. And then he stopped.
For several minutes they sat in silence, his eyes set somewhere in the distance while the memories churned around his head, until once more the words spilled out.
The coffee in front of her was cold and grey by the time he spoke again.
‘You know, I might have felt like a fool, if it hadn’t also been made clear that she had no idea who she was actually working for. All of this, and she hadn’t even bothered to check. Can you imagine that?’
Maria felt a prickle of hairs along her arms.
‘That man, that reject journalist scum she was fucking – did I tell you that bit? No? Oh yeah, she was bending over for him at the same time as taking every penny my family ever gave her, lapping up every opportunity we offered. And the girls, they—’
He looked up, and then something stopped him continuing with his sentence. He picked up the stirrer and moved it absent-mindedly around in his cup.
‘You know, sometimes I try to picture her face the moment the penny drops at how she’s been played. Oh, to be a fly on the wall the moment she discovers that all along she was actually working for one of the biggest crooks in Central Africa.’
He was talking to himself now. Whether or not Maria was present was neither here nor there. She was the one into whose arms he fell, believing he had already been more betrayed than he could ever be.
Maria
The day before Anna dies
The day before Maria is due to meet David at the airport, she takes a short walk from her hotel to Regent’s Park. She already knows from her Google searches what to expect as she approaches the stretch of Nash buildings behind her, along the path that curves towards the bench where she had insisted they meet. She recognises his face from the photographs online, the unnaturally blue eyes the computer screen had failed to do justice.
‘Harry?’
He looks up, his eyes narrowing sharply as they meet hers before looking around, instinctively, for signs of company.
She could not be sure that he would come, after her call from the phone box the day after Felicity ‘let her go’. She had stolen his number from Anna’s phone with such ease that she wondered how Anna had ever thought she was fooling anyone.
Taking a seat, Maria holds out her hand.
‘My name is Maria. Like I said on the phone, I’m a friend of Anna’s. I also believe we have another person in common.’
‘Another person in common, you say?’ His accen
t is soft and she can instantly see from the way he holds his face, the intensity of the eyes, what had drawn Anna in; though she will not be making that mistake.
Harry raises his cigarette to his lips and inhales, the paper burning at the edges.
‘Yes. I think until now, you and I have been working from different angles, towards the same common goal. And I think we could help each other, if we joined forces.’
Something clicks, a look of intent forming at the corners of his mouth.
‘Is that right?’
Unnerved by the depth of his stare, she looks down for a moment and then lifts her head.
‘If you’re anything like me, you’re not going to want to see him get away with it. After everything we’ve given to bringing them to justice?’
‘We?’
‘Yes, we …’
‘What are we talking about here?’
Harry keeps his expression cool, taking another drag of his cigarette as he looks out across sculpted hedges circling an ornamental fountain.
‘I assume you’ve heard about David.’
Harry raises an eyebrow, his voice measured. ‘I read something about it. The funeral was a few days ago, wasn’t it?’
‘David’s not dead.’
She watches his face turn towards her, and she smiles.
‘Now you’re listening? David is alive and is fleeing to the Maldives – tomorrow evening – where, as I’m sure you know, there is no extradition treaty, so once he is there, he’s free. MI6, they’re no longer interested. The African authorities, from what I gather, because of Nguema’s involvement and how much influence he has there, they aren’t in a hurry to prosecute. If anyone does try to fit him up for it, there is a plan to lay the blame on Anna. So the way I see it, there are only two people left on this earth who care about bringing Clive to justice. And one of us has been asked to accompany David to the Maldives, as his mistress.’
Harry cocks his head, exhaling a long line of smoke, his face breaking into a smile.
The Second Woman Page 29